Impulse-buying behavior is increasing in traditionally high-involvement categories and in day-to-day purchases. This article discusses how time constraints have been the dominant theme of the buying experience in the ‘90s.

This article explains a method called the buying process approach, which helps pharmaceutical firms closely examine how patients move through the health care system. By identifying areas where problems occur and understanding how those problems affect patients’ use of health care brands, marketers can design strategies to overcome roadblocks.

Finally on the upswing of a global economic meltdown, marketers are beginning to consider raising prices to recoup losses and keep up with inflation. The author offers several strategies, tactics and communication plans to increase prices without losing business.

Energy Pulse is a national consumer study that analyzes consumer energy use, energy conservation and purchasing behaviors relative to energy-efficient and “green” products and services. About to enter its fourth consecutive year in 2008, Energy Pulse is a national consumer study that analyzes consumer energy use, energy conservation and purchasing behaviors relative to energy-efficient and “green” products and services.

The author reviews several approaches to pricing research - including price sensitivity meters, purchase intention surveys, and designed pricing experiments - and discusses their relative strengths and weaknesses.

This article profiles discrete choice modeling which, unlike conjoint modeling, does not require pairing of all attributes. Therefore, unrealistic products are not produced. The respondent does not rate, sort or rank-order, but instead acts as if he or she is in the marketplace, selecting which product to buy.

This article discusses several approaches to determining customer price sensitivities – analyzing actual sales as a function of price, laboratory purchase experiments and preference studies where buyers are asked to express their purchase likelihoods for a product at various price levels. The article then describes the use and advantages of a form of conjoint analysis that allows researchers to estimate both feature prices and the overall price in order to better measure price sensitivities of consumers.

The addition of data on customer expectations and attribute importance to the gap analysis process paints a more detailed picture for companies seeking insight into the factors that customers consider during the purchase process.

The popular top-box measure has serious flaws because it can mislead marketers with data that may be statistically significant but answers an irrelevant business question. Instead of relying on top-box, the author argues for choice experiments, which more accurately differentiate among similar concepts, more effectively measure cannibalization and make it easier to assess the overall impact of line extensions on a business.